A hotel worker who secretly hid a Ryanair steward's body in an underground garden tomb has been jailed for life.

A French mob took turns to knife and bludgeon Christophe Borgye with a claw hammer before burying him beneath a garden shed where he lay undiscovered for four years.

Sebastian Bendou, 37, was yesterday ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years for the 'planned execution' of the "homosexual" victim who was lured to a specially-prepared 'killing room' at his home in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.

Together with mastermind Dominik Kocher, they battered the defenseless 36-year-old before wrapping his remains in tarpaulin and hiding it in an outdoor tomb, covered up with piles of concrete to ward off any prying eyes.

Detectives believe the motive was money, but also Kocher's twisted belief the victim was a French spy who 'planned to rape his daughter.'

Pictures show how Borgye was covered in cement and wrapped in sheets to hide his body, along with the murder weapons.

Cops found a low wall built inside the shed to hide the rubble, stacked three rows high with bricks to keep the airline worker concealed.

Bendou, who last year rang up police to confess to the 2009 crime, claimed he, Borgye and a third man - Manuel Wagner - were controlled by gangmaster-type manipulator Kocher, who ordered they pay most of their wages into his bank account.

Wagner was cleared of assisting an offender and preventing an unlawful burial, but Kocher was found guilty of murder at an earlier trial.

Victim: Christophe Borgye

He was ordered to serve a minimum of 23 years behind bars, but recently-ousted Attorney General Dominic Grieve believes that sentence could be too lenient and has begun an appeal to possibly lengthen his punishment.

Mr Justice Alistair McDuff told Bendou: ''This was a wicked and cowardly attack but you already know that because it preyed heavily on your mind over the next four years. If you had been able to live with your conscience this would have been a crime which would have gone undetected.

"Christophe Borgye was a wholly innocent man and the fear and pain he must have suffered in his dying minutes is unimaginable. This was wickedness beyond comprehension. But I also take into account the fact that it was it was your conscience your inability to cope mentally with the horrors of this event which led to the discovery of this crime."

Concrete tomb: The house in Ellesmere Port where Christophe Borgye's body was buried

Bendou, 37, who claimed he was mentally-ill at the time of the killing, and acted like a 'puppet' under Kocher's command.

Describing how they wore blue plastic shoes and laid tarpaulin on the floor to catch the flow of blood during the murder, Bendou said: "Dominik put the knife into his neck and said 'that's for my children'.

The three men lived together while Kocher lived on the same street with his wife and children.